Does this mean I can blame Red Sox medical staff for the signings of Crawford, Dice-K and Lackey? Yes!

Following European soccer news makes me realize the value of a DL. If a soccer team has a player with, say, malaria, nobody knows whether he's gotten over it and is fit to play, or is going to be out for 2 weeks, or is going to be out for 18 months, or is going to be able to play every other game, or what. It's all rumors. Someone who in baseball would be described as "injury-prone" often ends up being viewed as simply a bust, because there's no clear reason why he isn't playing. Look at Darren Fletcher. Fans were told for six months that he had "a virus", all the while nebulous reports were coming out that he had lost 25 pounds, had not been seen anywhere near the rest of the team for months, et cetera. He came back in September and people thought he was fine, then he was taken out again as the non-virus truth was revealed - that he had "a bowel condition". Wait, that is also extremely vague. Then it was specified officially that he had ulcerative colitis, in response to widespread accurate and inaccurate speculation.

Some people say his career is over, some say he's decided to be a coach, some say he'll be back at the beginning of next season. And the only reason we know the truth is that he's one of the major players at Manchester United. Imagine the average injured player, sitting on the bench as fans speculate over whether he's just had knee surgery, or he's lazy, or the coach decided he doesn't fit into the system, or what.

Edit: This article isn't about getting rid of the DL, it's about trying to predict injuries. Just making it clear that I know that.

If baseball somehow did get rid of the DL, that would be a massive, massive advantage to high-payroll teams, I would think. If you always have the resources to get a replacement-level or better on relatively short notice in case of an injury, you can afford to gamble on an oft-injured player, confident that you can fill his roster spot if you need to.

No. 3, by "ending" the DL, Conte is looking toward a dream goal whereby teams can predict injury prone players well enough that they don't need a DL because they will construct rosters out of players who don't get injured.

#4 ... yes but (a) Conte seems well aware that is impossible as injury RISK assessment is the goal and (b) the headline probably wasn't written by Conte. :-)

I don't know if it's the "final frontier" but it's certainly a big missing piece of information (at least for us out here).

#3- How would a high-payroll team be able to fill the injured player's roster spot, if the injured player is still filling it due to the lack of a disabled list?